By Kimberly Rushing
She sits patiently on an unstable and very uncomfortable wooden chair. Veronica feels as if its legs are about to give in at any moment. Given the weight of her voluptuous hips, it’s a blessing the chair withheld this long. It’s clear that too many people sat in this same spot too many times for the exact same reason why she was now sitting in this feeble wooden chair, and everything about this day is irritating her. From the dusty stale smell of the room to the white people surrounding her pretending to care as they explain to her what her best options are. Using big words arbitrarily, assuming she couldn’t understand what was going on. But out of everything that is getting under her skin, nothing compares to how annoyed she feels to be sitting in this raggedy wooden chair.
She thinks to herself, “Well, damn, with all the money the state gets for each person they prosecute and throw into jail like waste in the trash can, the least they can do is buy the court house some new, more comfortable chairs. But no, that would be too much, like right.”
Veronica can’t remember how she got caught, or when she was brought to the courthouse. Everything up until this point is nothing but a blur to her. It all feels surreal. All she can do is try to keep her mind off her near fate, as the off white court house walls close in on her. Anxiety begins to conquer her mind, and it’s getting hard for her to breath. To avoid passing out or letting this feeling of hopelessness over whelm her to tears, she chooses to release her anxieties through aggression.
“This hard-ass chair is making my butt hurt! I don’t have time for this shit. They need to let me know what they’re going to do so I can get the fuck out of here.” She exclaims, interrupting her lawyer’s babbling on about, appeal this, and no evidence that.
She is so tired of sitting in this courthouse, watching her dumb-ass lawyer go back and forth, as she calls herself “defending” Veronica.
“What the fuck am I paying her for? If I could stand up and defend myself I would, because this stupid little blond bitch is not helping the matter in any way shape or form. How the fuck did she make it through Law school? Her whore-ass probably fucked all the professors. Just looking at her dumb-ass in that tight-ass suit makes me want to smack the shit out of her.” Just the thought of her lawyer sucking dick for an A+ makes Veronica laugh; her thoughts are the only thing keeping her sane, during this circus of a situation.
Veronica’s lawyer is a gorgeous young blond in her late twenties who did, in fact, used her looks to get through college. But it’s been said that you can’t “fake the funk” for too long before the truth shows. The lawyer’s lack of knowledge is now showing, as well as her protruding breasts, which appear to be trying to unbutton her shirt to break free from its tight hold.
“If it wasn’t for the Judge slobbering over her breasts, popping out that little-ass V-neck button-up, he would have been sentenced my ass.”
Veronica is being tried for several felonies, therefore she is not given the right to defend herself, making all her own years of law school a waste, in this situation. Veronica is infuriated. If she could, she would stand up and strangle the judge to death without a second thought. But she is bound by the steel cuffs that are tightly grasping her wrists, cutting off her circulation, forming purple and blue bruises, as she awaits the verdict. She knows that the final decision will never take away the personal justification for her actions. She has no shame in what she did, and why should she?
Everything that has taken place in the past eight years is teaching her a lesson that very few will ever get the chance to learn. If she had the opportunity for a second chance, she’d do it all over again.
“No matter what that perverted bald, white man, hiding behind his righteous front has to say, I know he has some skeletons buried beneath that big ass prestigious robe of his that could probably land his fat hairy as in jail, for life, too.”
The judge notice Veronica mumbling and asks, “What was that miss Whinnfield?”
“Nothing, your honor.”
She wish that all of this would be done and over with. She hates him and all authority figures; in her book they deserve no respect. She can’t stand the way they all walk and talk like they are better than everybody else, especially in her old neighborhood. Cops ride around, blasting their loud annoying sirens, just to drive through red lights. And they love to jump out on innocent black guys, minding their business. Justifying it by saying that the man “looked suspicious.” She can’t stand the Law. But this is a relatively new feeling. She used to look up to the law. As a child she would play dress-up in her father’s uniform and pretend that she was protecting all her Barbie’s from harm. Sometimes her dad would even let her touch his gun, under his supervision of course. But to be in the situation she now is in, with the credentials that she worked so hard to obtain, she realizes that everything that glitters ain’t gold and that cops are only pretending to be hero’s, because it was the cops that set her up.
As a child, her grandmother was very religious, and made it her job to instill the principals of God into all of her grandchildren. One of Veronica’s favorite scriptures is, “Let he without sin cast the first stone.” [John 8:7]. So she never feels like anybody is better than her and vice-versa. But for some reason certain people love to act like their shit don’t stink, like no matter what they do it is still their place to cast judgment on others. “I had to show those motherfuckers, I had to put those fools in their place, six feet under. Now they have plenty of time to sit around and talk shit as they rot in hell, like the scum of the earth that they are.” As far as Veronica is concerned, she is the victim. She is the one who has to carry the scars both internal and externally, from what they did to her, every day of her life for the rest of her life. But at least now she knows she will get the last laugh.
Veronica is still a little curious as to how it all caught up to her. She thought she was out of the water. After graduating from Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and starting her own Law Firm in the thriving city of Manhattan, New York, she was sure that things would only get better from there. Everything that had transpired happened years ago, when Veronica was very young, very naïve, and very alone. When she was eighteen, she found out what her boyfriend had done, and so she retaliated. No one ever said a word, not even his family, because everyone knew what she had been though, so they knew that he and his accomplice’s deserved it. But the reason she now sits on trial, is more than just the laws way of creating justice. This is a vengeance, and Veronica knows vengeance when she sees it. That’s the funny thing about karma. No matter how high up you may stand, or how royal and untouchable you might think you are, life can still knock you off your pedestal, just to remind you that you are not the one in control. So she refuses to be mad at herself for being caught, but she is anxious to know where life will take her from this point. So she sits in this hard wooden chair, restrained by handcuffs, palms sweating, and a Sahara Desert forming in her mouth as she awaits her final judgment. It is complete silence in the court room as the Judge opens his mouth to tell her the fate of her future.
But soon as Judge Burlington is about to address the court, and reveal the decision, something strange happens. When he opens his mouth to speak all she can hear is,
“B-I-G. P-O-P-P-A, no info for the D-E-A…” She thought she was crazy before but now it is confirmed.
“They’re better off taking me to the crazy house, because I have to be hallucinating” As she looks around the court room no one else seems to notice this middle-aged white judge, quoting a black hip hop legend, during the middle of a trial. Her vision begins to get blurry as if she is fainting, but she can’t feel herself falling. Then the music to the popular 90’s hip hop record begins to play. It starts as a faint noise, but gets louder and louder the more alert she becomes. Now she is back in her one bed room apartment in down town Manhattan N.Y. Her digital alarm clock is playing “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems” by The Notorious B.I.G. from her iPod. It is attached to her digital alarm clock, programed to play music 6:30a.m. every morning. The music is slowly waking her up from a bad dream that has been haunting her on and off for the past few weeks. She never though that her past would play such a big role in her present, but then again she never used to think much about anything she did.
As an adolescent, she lived as if her body was on auto-pilot. She would go through her daily routines and commute, day in and day out as if it was simply programmed into her memory, and not by conscious actions. For a long time she functioned this way. Her body would be moving but her mind wasn’t there. She is not insane, or mentally disabled, this was just a defense mechanism that she developed while in grade school to prevent things happening around her to affect her emotionally. But eight years ago something changed her life forever. Something so traumatizing that she was forced to come out of the perfect little Fantasy Land in her mind in which she was once bound. She was given two options: Give up or give it your all! So she pushed her worries aside and continued on with her goals of going to law school, ultimately earning her masters and Ph. D in Law, both shocking her spectators and herself.
Everyone knows Veronica has great potential which is why most people despise her, especially her family, but she never noticed their hatred until it was too late. No one thought she would ever act on her natural abilities to do great things because of her absentminded ways. But once faced with death most people begin to acknowledge their worth and do everything in their power to prevent failure. In her case, it was simply the death of her reputation and everything she worked so hard to achieve. So like any strong soldier she got on her high house and rode all the way to the finish line with all intentions to prove those who deceived and used her wrong.
She can remember the day her life changed for the worse, but this is just the beginning of what would change her life forever. Now that this nightmare is faded from her thoughts, she begins to think back to the moment that her life went downhill, where it all began.
The Abington Review Volume 13 